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Constitutional Law Keyed to Choper
Eddings v. Oklahoma
Citation:
455 U.S. 104 (1982)Facts
In April 1977, sixteen-year-old Monty Lee Eddings and several younger companions ran away from their Missouri homes in a car owned by Eddings’ brother. Eddings had taken several firearms from his father. When Oklahoma Highway Patrol Officer Crabtree signaled Eddings to pull over, Eddings complied but then shot and killed the officer with a shotgun. Eddings was certified to stand trial as an adult and pled nolo contendere to first-degree murder. At the sentencing hearing, substantial evidence was presented about Eddings’ troubled childhood, including his parents’ divorce when he was five, his mother’s possible alcoholism and prostitution, lack of supervision, and his father’s excessive physical punishment. Mental health professionals testified that Eddings was emotionally disturbed, developmentally immature for his age, and potentially treatable. Despite this evidence, the trial judge explicitly stated he could not “consider the fact of this young man’s violent background” in determining the sentence, though he did consider Eddings’ youth as a mitigating factor.
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